ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is a tool to develop and maintain professional competence and to facilitate lifelong learning. CPD is compulsory for health professionals in South Africa, and has an additional mandatory requirement that five Continuing Education Units (CEU’s) must be obtained annually on human rights, ethics and medical law.
A literature search yielded limited information on ethics education specifically for South African dietitians. As a result a cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on all dietitians registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) for the year 2010 – 2011 to determine whether dietitians feel that there is a need or demand for standardised ethics update courses, and if so, the format in which dietitians would prefer these courses. All data was collected via self-administered questionnaires that sought demographic data, data on dietitians’ awareness of ethics aspects, and the format/s preferred for standardised ethics update courses. The questionnaires were distributed electronically or via the postal system. The response rate to the study was 4.5%, which was low.
The results indicated that 58.7% of dietitians obtain the minimum requirement of 5 ethics CEU’s per year. Only 21.7% feel that there are sufficient opportunities to gain 5 ethics CEU’s and 40.2% are satisfied with the content of current CPD activities related to ethics. There are very low levels awareness and knowledge of existing guidance documents on conduct and ethics aspects available on the HPCSA’s website, and only 9.8% of respondents have carefully read and studied this information. Dietitians prefer lectures and Internet-based activities for courses on ethics.
The study concluded there is a definite demand amongst respondents for standardised ethics update courses and an urgent demand for support with conduct and ethics issues. Recommendations are focused on ways to raise awareness of existing supportive documents available from the HPCSA on conduct and ethics issues as well on the formation of sub-committees dealing with ethics aspects and possible development of standardised update courses on ethics.